Excelsior Sports Correspondent
JAMMU, Sept 30: J&K climbers kept their state flag flying high during the 21st North Zone Sport Climbing Competition held at Delhi with eight climbers winning 13 medals including two gold and six silver and all of them getting selected in the 23 member North Zone team for the forthcoming National Sport Climbing Competition to be held at Indian Mountaineering Foundation, New Delhi from November 27 to 30, 2015.
The best performance of the state team was on full display in the Girls category. Shivani Charak, last year’s Zonal champion in the Sub Junior category who this time participated in the Girls category became the new champion in Lead as well as Speed climbing and also clinched a bronze medal in bouldering. Shilpa Charak, Shivani’s elder sister and team mate, also put her best performance to win three silver medals for the state. The remaining one gold medal in Bouldering and two bronze medals in lead and speed climbing went to Shivpreet of Punjab.
The state climbers in the boys category also performed creditably to clinch one silver and three bronze medals. While Aman Dogra won a silver medal in Speed climbing Mrityunjay Sharma, last year’s National bronze medalist, clinched three bronze medals in lead, speed and bouldering. Infact, Aman Dogra who had secured the second place in the semi final, was poised to win the Gold medal in Bouldering but just slipped at the last moment and finished at the 4th place.
11years old Asma Gul, a class 5th student of Sprawling Buds School, Jammu, regaled the crowd with her clean and power packed moves in the Sub Junior girls category. But since she had absolutely no experience in roof climbing she could not cross the last hurdle despite her best efforts and eventually finished runner up. Komal Rawat of Haryana an experienced climber, won the Gold medal. Renu Devi,another good climber of J&K clinched the bronze medal.
Much was expected of Ajay Deep and Arun Deep, two most powerful state climbers in the Sub Junior Boys category but like Asma Gul they had no experience of negotiating the roof and eventually Ajay finished runner up and Arun had to be content with the 4th place.
Another good performance came in the Men’s category in lead climbing in which two state climbers Anil Kumar and Hardev Singh qualified for the final round. It was the first time during the last 19 years state participation in the Zonal competition that 2 state climbers reached the final round. However, in the face of very tough competition among the national and international climbers our climbers finally finished 7th and 8th respectively. A good performance indeed!
A total of 26 climbers and 4 officials of Mountaineering Association of J&K participated in the Zonal competition which was organized by IMF North Zone Committee under the aegis of Indian Mountaineering Foundation, the apex national body for adventure sports. The J&K team was sponsored by J&K State Sports Council.
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